Monday, August 22, 2011

Follow the Eighth Marines on Google Maps

One-Eight Basetrack is an experimental media project, tracking the deployment of 1/8 – 1st Battalion, Eighth Marines, throughout the duration of their deployment to southern Afghanistan. A small team of mobile media operators is embedded with the battalion, transmitting their reports and reflections from Helmand province as they travel across the battalion’s area of operations.

The project is using Google Maps with the SIMILE Timeline to provide a navigation aide to the videos, photographs and posts collected by the team on the ground.

The videos of the marines serving their tour of duty in Afghanistan are particular powerful. As photographer Teru Kuwayama says the project creates "a pipeline between 1,000 Marines working in very austere, isolated conditions in southern Afghanistan and connects them to their mothers, their fathers, their wives, their girlfriends, their husbands and their kids."